Wood

The video on wood that we had to watch is a British Columbia video. This company is a world leader in wood construction, export and research on this subject. This video talk about all the benefits of woodframe construction, in this entry i`m going to do a summary about the video:

The construction with wood (Woodframe construction) trhought the years have proved to be strong durable and eficient. This have been prove, because the British Columbia Company, have made a lot of research in this subject and have constructed hundreds of houses and buildings of wood in the countries that have to support big earthquakes, severe winds, and extreme climate changes. This researchs have shown that the products that BC Co. offers are strong, accuracy, and have a long lasting performance. Because of this the demand of wood structures is growing rapidly around the world.

So we have that the wood homes and buildings are safer, more reliable and have more strenght to the forces of nature than those constructions made with concrete and steel.

The first menace to the woodframes constructions are the earthquakes, but studies have shown that this constructions can support earthquakes of 5.7 - 8.4 in Richter scale, and that wood constructions have better performance than concrete or stell ones in an event like that. This beter performance is because: first wood is both strong and light weight, and this means that less forces are exerted on the building; second wood is flexible so it is capable to absorve anticipated forces; and last but not least this constructions have many members and nails conection sso it has a lot of back up load pads to absorve the energy of the earthquake.

In this same line, all of the factors that I have said before made the wood structure capable of give protection against tyfoons and cyclones where the wind speed normally reach 180 kilometers per hour, and this depend on how the structure is attach to the foundation.

So we have that woodframe constructions are capable to support two big events of nature, but those are not the only advantages that wood constructions have. Other advantage is the ability to resist moisture. The constructions of BC Co. can support moisture because they put in practice four strategies to it, this are: deflexion, dreaning, drying and the use of durable materials.

Other techniques that BC Co. use are the ones to fight the termite problems, this are: supression, physical and chemical barriers, and the use of treating wood. Also this constructions have the same level of safety that stell or concrete when we talk about fire, because they put in practice a lot of techniques to fight that, and these same techniques made that those construction have a lot of acustic quality. Another advantage that woodframe construction have is that these material have the characteristic to stay warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

So as we can see, woodframe constructions have a lot of advantages, and this BC Co. have made important research in this subject, and they have put in practice a lot of techniques to made this constructions maybe the best of all.

Chicago Video

I really enjoyed watching the Chicago Video, it was really interesting. I really liked how the video was made and all the things that the showed. I didn`t know that before the great fire, Chicago was almost all made of wood, and that the fire started only with a spark. Also i didn`t know all the great buildings that Chicago have, even thouhg I have been there I didn`t know the architectural characteristics of them. The building that I enjoyed the most was the Auditorium building.

Concrete, ¨glass and wood

Concrete, glass and wood, are other materials that you can use in construction, beside brick, stone and steel. In this entry i`m going to tell you about the caracteristics of concrete, glass, and wood, and the uses that they have in architecture and in urban planning. Concrete is a structural masonry material that is made by mixing broken stone or gravel with sand with water, this materials has a lot of uses in construction but the main use in to make columns and plaques, and also you can use it to make sidewalks, roads, etc. Concrete has the structural properties of stone, that is great strength under compressive forces and almost none under tensile ones, also this material is kind of cheap and you can find it almost anywhere. The mainly weakness about concrete is that usually takes about five days to cure, or reach acceptable hardness, and for this the science have created a technique called steam saturation can shorten that curing time to less than 18 hours. Another disadvantages of concrete in my point of view is that this material is not to prescious, but that is only a insignificant one. Glass is a hard substance, usually brittle and transparent, composed chiefly of silicates and an alkali fused at high temperature. This material is used mostly to make windows and sliding doors. This material is very delicate, because it can break very easyly, that is the main weakness of it, but instead and on the contrary of concrete this material is very beautiful, and also you can make mosaics with to decore the buildings. Last but not least we have Wood, this material is obteined of course from the woods, and throught a process you put the wood into uniform pieces and you used them to make houses, floors, roads, etc. This material is used to create an imitation of old spaces, and when you used it to construct houses you used it in houses in the contry. The main advantage of the material, is that, as i said before it give you a feeling of comfortableness, and also is very prescious. In other hand, the material is very likely to be burn, i mean that this materials it has a lot of possibilities to get burn that other materials. LINKS: http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0813170.html http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0820970.html http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0861992.html